The best podcasts about Covid vaccines

18th January, 2021

While working on How To Vaccinate The World, a weekly podcast devoted to Covid vaccination, I’ve been a voracious consumer of other podcasts about vaccination and the vaccination race. Here are a few recommendations – feel free to email me if you have other suggestions.

Vaccines, Money and Politics – a formidably intelligent BBC two-parter written and presented by the formidably intelligent producer of How to Vaccinate the World, Sandra Kanthal. A terrific introduction to all the issues.

Moncef Slaoui was interviewed by Steve ‘Freakonomics’ Levitt on the People I Mostly Admire podcast. It’s an excellent interview, full of insights. (Although I thought Slaoui didn’t properly engage with the question about challenge trials.)

Freakonomics also asked, early on in the pandemic, whether a Covid-19 vaccine would change the future of medical research.

Planet Money examined the economics of emergency vaccination.

Conversations with Tyler put the usual dizzying range of questions to Noubar Afeyan, the founder of Moderna. Tyler’s breadth means there’s a lot more going on here than vaccine talk, but that’s all to the good.

Nature’s ‘Coronapod‘ podcast – sometimes stand-alone, sometimes folded into NaturePod – doesn’t always talk about vaccines, but it’s a good source for rigorous journalism.

The New York Times looked at the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

Slightly different, but you might enjoy ‘How To End a Pandemic‘ – my sideways look at the history of smallpox variolation.

My new book, “The Data Detective” is published in the US/Canada on 2nd February.

“Nobody makes the statistics of everyday life more fascinating and enjoyable than Tim Harford.”- Bill Bryson

“This entertaining, engrossing book about the power of numbers, logic and genuine curiosity”- Maria Konnikova

I’ve set up a storefront on Bookshop in the United States and the United Kingdom – have a look and see all my recommendations; Bookshop is set up to support local independent retailers.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This